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VERDICT: New realism for bristled brushes and automatic painting that approaches hands-on quality give Painter X a creative edge.

Over the years Painter has made its reputation by reproducing as faithfully as possible the way that traditional media, art materials and underlying canvas interact with each other...

As such, brush handling is key, and each new release has seen the introduction of new variations. This latest release is no different and ushers in a new category of “RealBristle” brushes that Corel claims represent “a major milestone for digital painting”. Existing users are likely to be more cynical – after all, Painter has always offered bristled brushes complete with advanced control over parameters such as thickness and clumpiness.
In practice, while the RealBristle brushes certainly aren’t earth-shattering, they do break new ground as you’ll see if you open their control palette. Here you can manage factors such as the level of rigidity and fanning and choose between a range of brush shape profiles and set the length of bristle and its overall roundness. It’s effectively mimicking the way that traditional artists swap between similar brushes to fine-tune the effect of their painting.
It’s a system that proves particularly effective when used with Painter X’s new “Universal” Colour Mixer which now extends multiple colour sampling to a much wider range of brush types. In real life applied paint just doesn’t come in uniform flat colours and oil-based artists in particular regularly mix and load multiple pigments simultaneously onto their brushes so this style of handling is a big step forward. With the combination of the Universal Mixer and the smoother, less banded results that RealBristle brushes offer, Painter X further blurs the distinction between traditional and digital painting.

With its RealBristle brushes and Universal Mixer Painter X gets closer than ever to replicating the working methods of traditional artists

The Brush tool and its many variants remain the secret of Painter X’s success, but this latest release also adds four new options to the Toolbox. In fact two of these, the Dodge and Burn tools for lightening and darkening areas of an image, already existed as Photo brush variants and have simply been promoted to make them more accessible. The other two, the Layout Grid and Divine Rectangle tools are completely new and are designed to help set up a pleasing image from the outset. The Layout Grid works by dividing the canvas into sections, most obviously into nine equal areas that comply with the common Rule of Thirds for image composition, while the Divine Rectangle lets you add guides based on the ratio of approximately 3:5 which has been recognized for centuries as particularly pleasing to the eye. They are handy options but, between the dedicated tools (limited to basic repositioning) and associated palettes, Corel certainly makes a meal of them.
These days, alongside the creation of original works of art, Painter also enables existing photographs to be given an artistic treatment. The recent (and free) 9.5 release was crucial here introducing two dedicated palettes to manage the preparation of the photo and the automatic application of brush strokes. In Painter X both have been enhanced starting with the Under-Painting palette which now lets you choose an overall colour scheme as well as control factors such as contrast and brightness. The schemes available include a range of presets suited for watercolours, sketches, chalks and so on, or you can choose from any open image. Alternatively, you can take advantage of the new Match Palette command which offers greater control over the matching process for both colours and luminance.
However it’s with the Auto-Painting palette that Painter X really breaks important new ground. In Painter 9.5 you would set how the current brush’s strokes should be laid down by choosing a preset style – diagonal, scribble, swirly and so on – and then introducing some randomness in terms of pressure, length, rotation and size to try and make it seem less obviously computer-generated. These options are still available but it’s unlikely they’ll see much use now after Painter X’s introduction of “Smart Stroke Painting”. Select this option and Painter X analyzes the image and now dynamically changes all brush settings on-the-fly to produce strokes that intelligently seem to follow the forms in the picture much as the traditional artist does.

The Smart Stroke system sees automatic painting finally come of age

The results can be stunning especially if you select the Smart Settings option which lets you choose from a range of dedicated brushes (from Acrylic to Watercolour) that have been optimized for such handling and which start off as broad brush strokes and then resolve down to smaller dabs to capture detail. In fact the results are so good and the process so efficient that it’s almost disappointing – it’s a bit like running one-off filters with little scope for creative input. On the other hand it’s important to remember that Painter X’s Smart Stroke Painting is very different to photo-to-art filters in that the range of possible end effects is virtually unlimited and, crucially, when the process is finished, you are left holding the brush that created the artistic reproduction so that you can always add your own defining human touches.
Throw in the additional improvements that have become almost mandatory with each new release of Painter – enhanced support for the latest Wacom tablets and Photoshop PSD files, a boost to overall performance especially when opening and closing files and some tweaks to colour management – and that’s it. It’s not a comprehensive all-round upgrade but, with its RealBristle brushes, Universal Mixer and especially its Smart Stroke Painting, Painter X really stands out from the crowd when it comes to computer-based art – both hands-on and automatic.

EASE OF USE 5/6
FEATURES 5/6
VALUE FOR MONEY 4/6
OVERALL 5/6